A Comparative Study Of Sino-japanese Teaching Syllabus For College English

With the globalization of economy and internationalization of higher educationin China, English plays a more and more important role. Chinese Education Ministryhas issued policies guiding the reform and development of English teaching, whichhas greatly pushed forward college English teaching in higher education. However,higher education, especially college English education can not keep pace with thedevelopment of economy and culture exchange in China, which is not the case withsome developed countries like Japan where higher education, as well as economy isfully developed. Apparently, college English education in China is lagged behinddeveloped countries like Japan due to historical reasons. In Japan, as well as in China,English is learned as a foreign language in most schools. Therefore, by comparingcollege English learning and teaching in both countries, we can analyze the currentsituation objectively, find deficiencies, and try to improve ourselves. That is, byanalyzing and comparing the present situation of college English teaching in bothcountries, China can properly absorb the advanced experience of Japan’s collegeEnglish teaching, so as to speed up the development and reform of college Englishteaching in China.Teaching syllabus which guides all the teaching activities plays a key role in theteaching outcome. This study is a comparative work of college English syllabusbetween China and Japan, which is composed of5parts, namely teaching objectives,curriculum design, teaching material, teaching methods and teaching evaluation. Itsets out to take syllabus for college English teaching of4universities,2from eachcountry, as its studied data. The4universities include Wuhan University, WuhanInstitute of Technology from China and Tokyo University, Chiba University from Japan. Based on a careful examination and analysis of the data, differences in thecollege English syllabus between China and Japan and problems in China’s collegeEnglish teaching are inferred. The study then puts forward some suggestions toimprove China’s college English teaching, as well as the teaching syllabus. Thesuggestions are as follows:1. Teaching goals should be profession-oriented.2. Integrated course credits in College English teaching should be reduced, andmore efforts should be put in ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teaching.3. Selection of teaching materials should be based on subject-matter content, andsubject-based textbooks are the best choice.4. Teaching methods should be more flexible, diversified, as well as practical.5. More approaches are needed in teaching evaluation, and some internationaltests like TOFEL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and IELTS (InternationalEnglish Language Testing System) may be taken into consideration.The purpose of the comparison is to realize the deficiencies in China and makeuse of the successful experience of college English teaching in Japan. Just as aChinese proverb goes,“There are other hills where stones are good for working jade”.This goal of the comparative study of is to improve college English teaching syllabusdesign, by doing which college English teaching in our country can make much moreprogress, gain much more achievements, and above all, college English teaching andlearning can be more efficient.